What's in a Name?

The genesis of CrassPip is a bit of a long story. It starts with me breaking my neck on December 28, 2005. Having lost much of the use of my right side, I became a self-proclaimed crip. As I began to accept the situation, I found many times where having a disability becomes an advantage, situations like skipping lines at amusement parks or parking in metered spots for free. In some of these cases getting the benefit required asking. Just as some are said to be "playing the race card" asking for special treatment, I started saying I was "using the crip pass," which is also what I called my disabled parking permit.

Now "CripPass" can come off the tongue a bit wrong, and I've always been a fan of word play and spoonerisms in particular. (Sometimes I shake a tower when I'm dirty, and I look for sparking pots when I use my crip pass.) So crip pass was transmuted into Crass Pip. I liked the meanings of the two words. I tend not to care about social conventions and have a dry, sometimes offensive sense of humor, so people may find me crass. I like games and Apple, so the meanings of pip (spot on a die or a seed like in an apple) were also meaningful. And perhaps best of all, nobody else in internetland was using the name.